Is it possible that genetic material in the food we eat–broccoli, steak, lettuce, tomatoes, you name it–affects our own body’s gene expression, and accordingly, our biological fate? Consider how you might approach eating if you knew that small bits of genetic material in your food could alter the genetic functioning of your own body.

Well, it’s likely happening.

As we’ve discussed in this post, we are in fact comprised of many species–bacteria, fungi, and “human” cells–a fantastic orchestration of lifeforms creating the bioresilience of self.

Now evidence suggests that our own gene expression may be regulated by our ingestion of foreign plant and animal genetic material. This evidence furthers an emerging biological comprehension of “self” as a diverse, interconnected, amalgamation of life-stuffs. Our organism is not nearly as contained or isolated from our surroundings as previously thought.

Biology 101: Gene Expression

Let’s review the basics of gene expression. Gene expression is the process by which information in our genes is used to synthesize functional molecules, such as proteins. In gene expression, the code of our DNA, our genotype, contributes to the formation of our observable characteristics and traits, or our phenotype.

In protein formation, segments of DNA are “transcribed” into messenger RNA which are then “translated” into a protein. Proteins then contribute to many number of processes in our body, including catalyzing metabolic pathways, replicating DNA, transporting molecules, and responding to stimuli. Needless to say, protein formation through gene expression is critical to our functioning.

In addition to transcribing messenger RNA, our DNA transcribes many types of functional “noncoding” RNA molecules that perform all sorts of different and important regulatory functions in the cell.

One of the most important classes of these noncoding RNAs are “microRNAs” or miRNAs. These are relatively small molecules (e.g., 19-24 nucleotides) that have the important role of regulating gene expression itself.

Through their interaction with messenger RNA, miRNAs support the normal functioning of all of our bodily systems. They help messenger RNA behave as they should during the translation of proteins. Often, they work to silence messenger RNA, stopping protein translation through negative regulation, but they quite possibly activate new translation through positive regulation.

“Bad” miRNAs (e.g., an miRNA in the wrong place) can contribute to many diseases, including cancer, heart disease, and obesity, as messenger RNAs run amok. (These facts are themselves the result of incredible and recent research.)

New Research Demonstrates Biological Activity from Ingested Micro RNA

We like to think of ourselves and other animals as closed systems. Perhaps as a result of this prejudice, it had been thought that miRNA ingested in our food could never function as an miRNA in our bodies. It seemed an unlikely possibility that miRNA in the plants and animals we eat could avoid degradation (especially if cooked), then travel from our gut to the bloodstream, and then to the tissues and organs where it could start messing with our gene expression.

For humans, the study found several plant miRNAs in human blood serum, but it did not go so far as identifying potential effects on gene expression or the resulting physiological consequence. However, for mice, the study observed that one of the plant miRNAs ingested in uncooked rice worked to decrease their levels of low-density liproprotein (i.e., LDL cholesterol, the good stuff we want more of).

To be clear, the mice were fed quite a bit of uncooked rice for this effect to be observed. But this is phenomenal.

It is suspected that biologically active miRNAs are more prevalent in the meats we eat (given our shared genetics with animals). But plant miRNAs, despite their difference from animal miRNAs, need only six perfectly complementary nucleotides in their “seed” region to match up with our animal messenger RNA and potentially affect our gene expression. Out of the hundreds of plant and animal miRNAs that we eat daily, the number of biologically active miRNAs remains unknown.

The Big Picture

We eat plants and animals. Their microRNAs gets into our blood. This likely affects the expression of our genes (not to mention, possibly the gene expression of all of the bacteria species that inhabit our microbiome!). And gene expression effects everything about us. But the physiological effects, if any, are as of yet unknown. What a wonderful mystery!

These studies certainly give new meaning to “we are what we eat.”

Thumbnail image by nobeastsofierce via Shutterstock.com.

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http://bioresilience.com/662/the-boundary-less-self-gene-regulators-in-food/feed2The State of Biodiversity: Reflections on the Living Planet Index and the Short History of Modern Environmental Progresshttp://bioresilience.com/566/the-state-of-biodiversity-reflections-on-the-living-planet-index-and-the-history-of-environmental-progress
http://bioresilience.com/566/the-state-of-biodiversity-reflections-on-the-living-planet-index-and-the-history-of-environmental-progress#commentsTue, 04 Sep 2012 23:24:29 +0000Galen Guerrero-Murphyhttp://bioresilience.com/?p=566

With so much doom and gloom surrounding biodiversity and environmental issues, I was pleasantly surprised to find some glimmers of hope in this year’s Living Planet Report (PDF, 16.2MB). The Report, prepared by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), the European Space Agency, and the Global Footprint Network, summarizes changes in the health of biodiversity over time since 1970 (measured through the “Living Planet Index”) and also provides an estimate of our growing, global ecological footprint.

Overall, the news is somber. The global Living Planet Index (LPI), which measures changes in the abundance of 9,014 populations of 2,688 vertebrate wildlife species around the globe, shows an approximate 30% decline in relative, global species abundance between 1970 and 2008. This is bad news for biodiversity.

Living Planet Index (LPI), WWF & ZSL, 2012

Additionally, the report concludes we are using the equivalent of 1.5 Earths to support our daily activities, which is otherwise known as our Ecological Footprint. In other words, we are using Earth’s renewable resources at a rate far exceeding their natural regeneration, which, if continued, will eventually lead to their depletion.

But not all is grim. Let’s take a closer look at some of the hopeful results.

Growing Abundance of Temperate Species, Species in the Palearctic Realm & Species in High Income Countries

The Living Planet Index offers some positive news for temperate wildlife species. While the global index of species abundance has declined, the abundance of temperate species has increased since 1970.

(Temperate regions lie between tropical and polar latitudes, and include the United States, Europe, northern Africa, and most of China.)

Specifically, temperate terrestrial species abundance increased by 5%. Temperate freshwater species abundance increased by 36%. And temperate marine species abundance increased by 53%. This is based on observed changes across 1,518 temperate wildlife species. Good news!

Surprising to me, the data also indicates species abundance in the palearctic biogeographic realm grew by 6% since 1970. This region includes northern Africa, all of Europe, the northern Middle East, most of China, and Japan.

Additionally, total species abundance in high income countries increased by 7%. This includes 70 nations around the globe, including the United States, most of Europe, Australia, and others.

How Did This Seemingly Good News for Biodiversity Come About?

The Living Planet Report states with good reason that one possible explanation for growing abundance of temperate species is that most habitat destruction and alteration in temperate regions occurred prior to 1970, the first year of measurement. Thus, the growing abundance of species in these regions is not necessarily indicative of a healthy state of temperate biodiversity. Rather, all we can conclude is that the state of biodiversity in these temperate regions has improved some since its terribly dismal state in the mid-20th century.

Now, while it is true that massive land conversion had mostly occurred prior to 1970 in temperate regions, this general explanation doesn’t offer much as to why temperate marine species are fairing better, nor does it explain how increases in temperate species abundance occurred alongside the slow, perpetual expansion of the human-built environment.

So what else has happened? Well, the Index’s starting time period of measurement (1970) happens to coincide with the birth of the modern environmental movement.

The Birth of Modern Environmentalism

September 2012 marks the 50th anniversary of the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. Her groundbreaking work is often heralded as the trigger that started the modern environmental movement. Her book explored pesticide use and environmental harm, and it resulted in the emergence of a truly new and widespread awareness of and distaste for chemical agents. She wrote:

…the central problem of our age has therefore become the contamination of man’s total environment with such substances of incredible potential for harm–substances that accumulate in the tissues of plants and animals and even penetrate the germs cells to shatter or alter the very material of heredity upon which the shape of the future depends.

In an effort to prevent malaria, a World War II soldier applies a healthy dose of DDT to his friend. Photograph via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

Posing questions just as relevant today as they were in 1962, Carson wrote:

How could intelligent beings seek to control a few unwanted species by a method that contaminated the entire environment and brought threat of disease and death even to their own kind?

And:

The question is whether any civilization can wage relentless war on life without destroying itself, and without losing the right to be called civilized.

Good question…

In 1970, eight years years after the publication of Silent Spring, the United States National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) was signed into law. NEPA requires to this day that the environmental impact of federally led or authorized projects be reviewed and minimized in the US and abroad.

Several months later, the US government formed the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

…plus much, much more. Environmental laws and regulations have emerged at the federal, state and local levels to protect our water, our air, and our land from risky, irresponsible, or short-sighted behavior. And it is worth emphasizing that bipartisanship in the US has made such environmental progress possible, with NEPA being signed into law and the formation of the EPA occurring under, yes, Richard Nixon.

Similar policy trajectories in temperate regions can be observed across the globe.

These policy measures have no doubt had a incredibly beneficial effect on the state of biodiversity within their spheres of influence. It is no coincidence that temperate species abundances have increased since 1970. Such environmental progress has come about only through persistent, progressive, and precautionary policy advocacy and rule making, which has stimulated environmentally-preferable technological advancement, more benign human development, and environmental stewardship.

An Urgent Call for Further Action

The point? Environmental policies and regulations have played a critical role in improving the state of biodiversity, including our own species’ health (humans are, after all, members of biodiversity!). Substantial achievements have been made. Yet much more must be done.

For instance, according to the Living Planet Index, tropical species abundances since 1970 are estimated to have declined by an astoundingly dismal 61%. And while temperate species abundances have been slowly increasing, we still see countless species facing the threat of extinction.

Businesses and governments (…people in leadership roles) have a unique responsibility to help align human progress with biological and ecological preservation. And no single institution can tackle the environmental issues of our day on their own. Thus, calls to abolish the EPA or draw down environmental regulations are foolish and counterproductive to flourishing economies. So, too, are notions that businesses have no part in stewarding positive change.

Modern environmentalism is still in its infancy, especially in developing nations and tropical regions, but we know a good deal about what must be done. Global regulatory responses are needed to ensure environmental regulations in one region don’t result in the “offshoring” of impacts to other regions (the US is terribly guilty of this behavior, and I wonder how this must have contributed to the divergent trends in tropical versus temperate biodiversity…). They are needed to address the unique economic and environmental challenges of nations, and to ensure tropical habitats do not continue to be degraded and depleted through perverse and exploitative economics.

Fifty years after Silent Spring, bold and steady commitment to environmental health has brought about real change. But we need more, now more than ever! This is easier said than done, yet it is certainly within our collective grasp.

I was recently driving between Boston and New York and saw the sad remnants of a road-killed fawn in the highway. Just a few miles later on the Merritt Parkway (a nicely wooded, scenic highway dense with four lanes of Connecticut traffic and a Jersey barrier divider) I sped by another fawn, this time alive at the edge of the road with a spark of determination in its eye. It would surely bolt across the highway any second, thankfully not in front of me. There’s nothing like a really cute animal in imminent danger to awaken the senses.

Surely, we’ve all seen our share of roadkill. And often the big kills are unnoticed by the casual driver. I’ve seen hundreds of hatchling painted turtles, no more than 2 to 3 inches in diameter, flattened like pancakes on a two-laner while migrating from their sandy, upland nest site to the large wetland on the other side of the road. I’ve seen the soggy remains of countless salamanders, frogs, and toads after being caught on a road during their orchestrated emergence under the early rains of spring, migrating en masse from their hibernation sites to their wetland breeding grounds. I’ve seen dazed turkeys stuck on the narrow strip of pavement between traffic and a road divider, a fox in the headlights, and so on.

We build “walls” to species movement all of the time. Fish can’t swim through steep or perched culverts (culverts that outlet with a waterfall) installed under roads. Turtles can’t get over curbs. Small animals of all sorts are unable to cross railroad tracks. And for the animals that can make it into a road crossing pointed in the right direction, few stand a fighting chance of success.

This snapping turtle is out of luck with that curb up ahead.

On my way to work on I-95 northwest of Boston, I decided to get intimate with the animal crapshoot of crossing a road. Check out the video below, captured during a non-rush hour time of day. I decided not to play Frogger with my own life.

Sadly, we’ve carved up wildlife habitat with our pavement, our tracks, our fences, and our curbs. We’ve created extreme habitat fragmentation in many places of the globe, significantly affecting species’ life cycles and resilience, providing little recourse for their migrations.

Barriers to Migration

Many reptiles and amphibians, such as salamanders and frogs, hibernate each year in dry, upland burrows, crevices or other covered areas, and they emerge each season to travel to breed in distant vernal pools, wetlands or other suitable habitat. Once the job is done, they return to their hibernating areas, or “hibernacula.” Often a road intersects the breeding grounds and hibernacula.

And let me tell you, salamanders and frogs are terrible road crossers. Don’t even get me started on turtles.

Here’s another example. Many species of fish, including salmon and trout, attempt to swim upstream to lay their eggs but are often unable to pass poorly-designed culvert crossings. Each bad culvert–too steep, too shallow, perched outlets–effectively cuts off organism passage within a stream. Fishermen have felt the pain of diminished fisheries, which are often a result of carved up habitat.

The stories go on and on and on.

And not only are normal migratory patterns affected by our barriers, we’ve reduced the abilities of wildlife to randomly wander and recolonize habitat areas–behavior that creates exceptional resilience among dynamic populations. Let me explain.

Metapopulations and Resilience

The presence of redundant, interconnected nodes is a common pattern found in systems–this contributes to their resilience. From our electric transmission grid to our food supply network, we intentionally design redundancy into our human-built systems. For instance, if a single power plant goes offline we can easily tap into another power source so long as we’re connected to it with transmission lines. (In many cases our systems are not so redundant and, thus, not so resilient–a topic for another day.)

Similar patterns are found among species populations. Consider several populations of salamanders spread across a region. Perhaps a single, large population inhabits a large, productive wetland, and the population is growing. And maybe several smaller populations occur nearby in less expansive wetlands, and their populations are slowly decreasing in size.

If the populations are connected in some way (e.g., a salamander is conceivably able to walk or otherwise hitch a ride to the next population), they comprise what is known as a metapopulation. Each population is transient and dynamic, yet the metapopulation on a whole may be relatively stable. Individuals immigrate and emigrate, and populations come and go, but the region remains populated with salamanders.

In this example, the large, growing population is a source of salamanders for the metapopulation–occasionally a few may trek to the smaller populations, offsetting their natural decline. Or let’s imagine the large population experiences a particularly harsh year–the wetland becomes contaminated and all of the salamanders die. If the populations are still interconnected, it is possible that the smaller populations may become a source of salamanders that will eventually recolonize the larger population. The exact dynamics can be difficult to predict, but nevertheless we find that the general pattern of these interconnected population “nodes” contributes to substantial resilience of the overall metapopulation.

A hypothetical metapopulation. Each node is a distinct population that is interconnected to others within the metapopulation. Some populations are sources (may import and export species) and some are sinks (only import species), and they may switch their source/sink status depending on ecological changes.

Metapopulation dynamics such as this are prevalent among species–and they clearly contribute to the resilience of biodiversity. Yet we hinder this resilience when we cut off the connections between animal populations with our roads, railways and other barriers to wildlife passage and crossing. We effectively stop metapopulation dynamics.

Reconnecting Wildlife

Fortunately, there are many ways we can support wildlife passage through our mazes of human activity. Pictured below are critter crossings installed on a new commuter rail line in Massachusetts to support movement of the spotted turtle (Clemmmys guttata) and other small animals between wetland habitats. Low fencing funnels the animals to narrow passageways that run underneath the tracks.

Wildlife fence and crossings installed under the tracks of the Greenbush commuter line in Massachusets.

And below is an example of a wildlife crossing to accomodate small animal migration under a new, steep substation access road in Wakefield, Massachusetts, constructed of an open-bottom concrete span.

Certainly, these crossings can be expensive to build. But not so relative to the cost of a project. In the grand scheme of things, it is well worth the incremental investment to support wildlife passage and resilience. We spend billions of dollars building wildlife barriers (roads, railroads, etc.)–the least we can do is cough up a bit more for wildlife crossings.

Policies and regulations are beginning to require better crossing design and implementation, such as requiring wide, open-bottom culverts at all new stream crossings. This is a good sign. Still, for big change to occur, developers should consider voluntary implementation of wildlife crossings on their new projects and retrofits of existing ones. It’s an easy, no-brainer way to enhance wildlife habitat value in your community and cultivate your project’s sustainability and reputation.

Have you seen or built any cool examples of wildlife crossings? How else might we address habitat fragmentation?

Our mouths are gates, but they are not closures to the outside. We take in the outside with every meal, kiss, and breath. And on the other end, our release of waste is evidence enough of our permeability. We are not closed systems.

We are superorganisms–biodiverse, seemingly single beings who are actually comprised of many, many different species. Much more than just Homo sapiens, we are biodiverse metacellular amalgamations of many organisms.

Thinking beyond the torus visual, there really is no “out.” Our skin creates an illusion of ourselves as discrete beings, but even these cell layers are somewhat permeable and crawling with tiny species. Sure, self is contained, but we are porous.

The infestation begins at birth: Babies ingest mouthfuls of bacteria during birthing and pick up plenty more from their mother’s skin and milk.

What is now being realized is that many of these species are unique to our species and our individual bodies (see here and here and here). They have coevolved with us over millennia, resulting in beneficial, symbiotic relationships that are uniquely our own–they help us resist infection and diseases, digest and extract energy from our food, and synthesize vitamins; we provide them a comfortable home.

We have been loaded with microorganisms throughout our evolutionary history–it makes perfect sense that they would evolve along with us! Thus, just like our genetics, our microbial build-up is uniquely ours–other species (and other people) have different microbiomes.

Perhaps you enjoy yogurt, inhabited by billions of Lactobacillus acidofilus and others. Or maybe kombucha and the beloved SCOBAY (symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast) it contains, comprised of a similarly diverse concoction for our gut. All the time we are introducing new lifeforms to our body to enhance the microbiome (…which may or may not be too effective)

Meanwhile, with a fear of bacteria we wash our hands and brush our teeth with antibacterial agents, prescribe (and flush…) large doses of antibiotics, and inhabit ultra-hygienic environments.

We imagine ourselves as distinct entities, a single species, some thing that can and should remain pure. This is an illusion.

We are in fact many species–a fantastic orchestration of many lifeforms creating the bioresilience of self.

And here is a favorite, illuminating quote from Francino et al on the early dynamics of the microbiome:

…maternally inherited populations detected in the infant at one month had been lost by 11 months, suggesting that early colonizers can be easily replaced by externally acquired species. Such dynamics limit the potential for development of long-term coadaptations between specific bacterial and host genotypes. Rather, an intermittent pattern of interactions between different strains and human genotypes is likely to result in a diffuse process of coevolution among all interacting partners.

With a bold stroke of courage and transparency, PUMA announced the completion of its first Environmental Profit and Loss (EP&L) Account (PDF, 2.1M) in the fall of 2011. This commendable advance toward mainstreaming the accounting of our planet’s natural capital provides other businesses (competitors, take note…) a possible road map to follow in suit.

How might your organization depend on open space? What are the opportunity costs of land use conversion for your business operations? What are the shared costs to society? As businesses begin to consider the risks and opportunities posed by diminishing “free” ecosystem services provided by open land and natural ecosystems, it becomes critical to answer these questions in financial terms. PUMA has taken the first step.

PUMA was honored as the overall winner of the Guardian’s 2012 Sustainable Business Awards and also won the biodiversity category for its release of the EP&L Account. The EP&L Account has made a tremendous splash in sustainability news and discourse. So how did they do it? Seeking a practical, repeatable, and robust approach to natural capital accounting, I investigated the land use valuation methods and assumptions that PUMA employed. You might be surprised to hear what PUMA found: their impacts to land cost society €37 million in diminished human welfare. In other words, society bears this cost of PUMA’s land use impacts.
How did PUMA arrive at this €37 million figure? And how and why should we come to terms with our businesses’ dependencies on open space and land (of which I’m sure there are many)? Read on for the BioResilience take.

The Big Picture

In developing the EP&L account, PUMA assessed impacts from their direct operations as well as suppliers all the way down the value chain (categorized as Tiers 1 through Tier 4 suppliers). Then, “the changes in human welfare which result from PUMA’s environmental impacts” were put into monetary terms–net costs of PUMA’s impacts to society are a loss; net benefits are a profit.

The calculated costs of their land use impacts to biodiversity and ecosystem services as they contribute to human welfare totaled €37 million (about 25% of the total EP&L account). The costs of greenhouse gas and water use impacts accounted for €47 million each (each comprising 33% of the account).

The 2010 EP&L account balance is a €145 “loss” (in externalized costs to society). This figure is substantial, especially when you consider that PUMA’s reported 2010 net earnings were €202 million (which does not incorporate the loss reported in the EP&L account).

Putting a Value on Land Use Impacts

PUMA states:

The flow of ecosystem services from natural areas accrues to society every year and, as the extent of natural areas decreases as a result of land conversion, so the annual flow of public ecosystem services is reduced.

(And so too does the value of the ecosystem services increase in proportion to their increasing rarity/diminishing returns, which PUMA acknowledges.)

In discussing their impacts to land, PUMA states that agricultural production of cotton, rubber and cattle (for leather) causes the greatest land use change across their supply chain. These activities are within Tier 4, raw materials production–the supply chain tier furthest from their direct operations. To evaluate their impact, PUMA conducted a detailed analysis of the value of the ecosystems converted for these agricultural production activities.

PUMA states a “more simplified” methodology was used to determine impacts from their direct operations and Tiers 1 through 3 of the supply chain (manufacturing, outsourcing and processing, respectively), which are much smaller than those of raw material production.

Calculating the Area of Impact

PUMA acknowledges that specific areas used for Tier 4 production are unknown. Thus, to estimate the total area of impact associated with Tier 4 activities they first identified the total, government-tracked areas used for cattle, cotton and rubber production in the states they source from. Then, they estimated their proportional share of the total production and associated land used for raw material production in each nation

Once they had an estimate of the total area associated with Tier 4 activities by nation, the entire areas used for cotton and rubber production were incorporated into the land use impact calculations. However, only a portion of the areas used for cattle production were incorporated, as leather is but one output of cattle production (some argue it could be considered a by-product in the production of meat).

PUMA states that because the hide is valued at up to approximately 15% of the value of meat (and thus contributes to the growing demand for cattle rearing and the associated land conversion), they incorporated into their land use impact calculations a fraction of the total area used for cattle production based on the proportion of the value of leather to the total value of a head of cattle (by nation).

Finally, PUMA identified the general terrestrial ecosystem types associated with the estimated areas of production based on the World Wildlife Fund’s terrestrial ecoregion delineation. The following table portrays the results:

Assigning Values

PUMA states that studies and methods published by The Economics of Ecosystems Biodiversity (TEEB) and others were used to calculate appropriate per hectare values for each ecoregion and each country where impacts occur. Based on a review of the included reference list, it appears the TEEB Valuation Database (Van der Ploeg, DeGroot & Wang, 2010) was instrumental, although the precise methodology is not disclosed.

PUMA conservatively assumes that all ecosystem services are lost following land conversion to cotton, rubber, and cattle production.

And as previously introduced (and to PUMA’s credit), they state:

Most underlying ecosystem valuation studies were performed recently and consider the cost of losing an additional hectare ‘today’, while PUMA is also interested in the cost of past conversions. To overcome this challenge the values from these studies have been adjusted to take into account the fact that ecosystem value per hectare increases as the extent of remaining natural areas diminish. PUMA makes the conservative assumption that ecosystem value is directly proportional to scarcity of the given ecosystem (rather than increasing more rapidly as scarcity increases which would give a lower average value over time) and an average value over time is developed based on this assumption.

This seems reasonable, although I certainly question its accuracy. A lengthy footnote in the EP&L account justifies the decision and acknowledges the drawbacks. In terms of the drawbacks to assuming a directly proportional relationship and then extrapolating an average, positive convex exponential relationships often more accurately reflect the relationship between ecosystem services and land conversion. These exponential curves denote the tipping points of many ecosystems beyond which a certain level of damage triggers ecological collapse. PUMA states that they decided to assume directly proportional relationships as a “strongly” conservative alternative due to lack of data. Fair enough.

Regarding the use of average values, they state:

Using the average is the most appropriate approach because today each converted plot contributes equally to the prevailing scarcity of ecosystem services, such that it would be inappropriate to assign them different values.

So, PUMA calculated an average value through time and arrived at per hectare average values for each country they sourced from ranging from €63 to €18,653, with an average weighted value of €347.

The weighted average values were multiplied by the areas of land use impacts caused by Tier 4 production to arrive at the EP&L account “loss.”

Improving Disclosure

In future updates to the account, I would like to see a bit more transparency (perhaps in an attachment to the report). For instance, it would be worth disclosing the total areas of impact by nation and by type of impact (i.e., production of cotton, rubber, or cattle); specific discussion of the sources, studies and/or methods used to extrapolate the monetary value of ecosystem services provided by open land as well as key assumptions; and more information regarding the general assumed timeframe of land conversion and value curves used to calculate the average value per hectare by country.

PwC and Trucost helped PUMA prepare the EP&L account and I wonder if they are hesitant to disclose all of their magic. I can’t say I would blame them, but these disclosures would further contribute to the development of a robust, consistent, and comparable methodology that other organizations may employ.

What else would you suggest including? What methods would you change?

In recent news, Executive Chairman, Jochen Zeitz, stated PUMA will “soon” stop using leather in all of its athletic shoes. I do wonder if the EP&L account helped illuminate the potential value of this decision, as it will provide a notable cost reduction in the EP&L account across many of the impact categories and supply chain tiers, including land use.

Overall, this is a commendable, groundbreaking effort that shows PUMA is taking seriously its externalized costs to society and is working to reduce them. I predict it is only a matter of time before many others follow in stride by accounting for their impacts to nature as they relate to human welfare. Bravo.

Nope, this is not a sale. This is about embracing a bold new vision for conservation–a vision of preserving and managing 50% of our planet’s land with conservation as a primary objective.

In a recent editorial in the February 2012 issue of Conservation Biology (Volume 26, Number 1), policy-driven regional, national and global conservation targets, such as the woefully inadequate objectives established at the 2010 Nagoya Conference on the Convention for Biological Diversity, were contrasted with targets proposed by empirically-based scientific studies. Upon analyzing these studies, the authors concluded a bold, scientifically-defensible, and precautionary conservation objective: conserve 50% of our Earth’s land for biodiveristy and to sustain the ecosystem services we all depend on.

The authors, citing Jetz et al. 2007 and Bunker et al. 2005, write:

An exclusive focus on global climate change, the current rage, may obscure other pressing conservation problems and divert funding from combating them. As a direct global threat to species and ecosystems, climate change is currently dwarfed by land-use change in response to human population growth and conversion of wildlands to agricultural use. Current rates of land-use change will make adaptation of species to climate change virtually impossible. Conversely, protecting native ecosystems can increase their resilience and their ability to store carbon.

We need to take a long, hard look at our regional, national and continent-level strategies and targets for conservation. Conservation lands should be as large as possible and “functionally connected” to allow movement and adaptive shifts by species. Some regions may warrant more or less than 50% conservation, but this is the average to strive for. Establishing national and continental wildlife corridors is a must.

And while large-scale planning is certainly necessary, we can also begin to think about the 50% goal in our regions, our neighborhoods, our own backyards. Are there ways to create wildlife value on your own property? Absolutely!

As we think about conservation, there is much ado about the ecosystem services that biodiverse ecosystems provides (including on this site). It is refreshing to read:

Biodiversity should be managed as a public good, but it is narrow minded to dwell exclusively on its material benefits to people. Discussions about human development and ecosystem services need to delve deeper and communicate more effectively…Conservation professionals should not assume that only economic and utilitarian values determine people’s attitudes toward conservation. Many people value nature for its own sake.

Indeed.

This short editorial draws a much-needed line in the sand by establishing a straightforward, global land conservation objective. Resembling the 350 ppm atmospheric GHG target embraced by climate scientists and advocates, this editorial just might provide the bold, simple and defensible vision we need to begin to challenge the often inadequate socially and politically-acceptable targets for land conservation.

Save 50% for biodiversity. Let’s do it.

Chime in–do you think this a realistic and achievable land conservation target?